Legislation to scrap the controversial two-child limit has cleared its initial parliamentary stage, moving the policy on step closer to abolition.
Introduced by the Conservatives in 2017, the policy restricts child tax credit and Universal Credit (UC) to the first two children.
During a Commons debate, it was branded a "political exercise in division between the “deserving and undeserving poor”.
MPs overwhelmingly backed scrapping the policy, voting 458 to 104 – a majority of 354 – to pass the Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill at its second reading.
Campaigners say the limit pushes 109 children into poverty daily across the UK.
If enacted, the change would allow families to receive the child element of UC for all their children, regardless of family size.
The Bill now faces further scrutiny from MPs and peers before becoming law. However, the government has indicated its intention to ditch the two-child limit from April.
Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said the policy had seen children used as pawns for almost a decade.
He told MPs: “It (the policy) was never really about welfare reform, nor was it even about saving money.
“No, this was always first and foremost a political exercise, an attempt to set a trap for opponents, with children used as the pawns in the exercise.
“This was all about the politics of dividing lines, dividing lines between so-called shirkers and strivers, between the old distinction of the deserving and undeserving poor.”
Labour had faced calls to scrap the policy since it came to power in summer 2024, but cited spending controls as a reason for not being able to ditch it immediately – indicating there would be no change without economic growth.
Seven Labour MPs were suspended by the party after backing an SNP motion to scrap the welfare measure in a vote in Parliament that year.
Following repeated calls from charities, campaigners and many of the party’s own MPs, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in the autumn budget last year that the Government would move to scrap the policy from April.
The Conservatives have previously said they would re-instate the policy if they came back into power, with shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately telling the Commons many families are “doing the maths” of whether they should have another child.
She said: “Why should people on benefits get to avoid the hard choices faced by everyone else?”
Echoing this, her party colleague, Conservative former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden, defended the policy as having had a “principle” behind it “which is, will people take responsibility for their own actions?”
He added: “Because there are thousands, millions of people who choose not to have more children because they want to take responsibility for their lives and they don’t want the state to take responsibility.
“And yet now with this change, the Government is saying to those people, not only will the state take responsibility, you as the individual will have to pay for it through higher taxes.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage previously said his party would abolish the policy, but later clarified that would only be for families where both parents were British and working full-time. Last month, he said his party’s MPs would vote against getting rid of the limit.
Backing the Government Bill, Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson Steve Darling said it is in his party’s “DNA to be against the two-child limit”, as he supported the Government’s plans to remove what he called a “Dickensian policy of judging families”.
Tory former minister Sir Desmond Swayne suggested scrapping the policy was more about saving Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, but Mr McFadden said Labour’s first job when the party took office had been to “stabilise the economy after the irresponsibility and chaos of the Tory years”.
He said Ms Reeves, who sat behind him during the debate, had set out how scrapping the policy “can only be done now and can only be funded through a combination of savings from fraud and error in the benefit system, changes to the Motability scheme and reform of online gambling taxation”.
Around 400,000 fewer children will be living in poverty this April compared with 12 months earlier as a result of the change, according to analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said the move will cost £3 billion a year by 2029/30.
The Government has said that scrapping the two-child limit alongside other measures in its wider strategy to tackle child poverty will lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030, which it hailed as the biggest reduction in a single parliament since records began.
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